Due to the widespread use of communication equipment, IoT (Internet of things) in which various devices are connected to a network so as to perform communication has attracted attention, and systems that provide various services have been devised. For example, a remote monitoring system may be provided by causing various devices connected to a network to communicate with an application server. For example, in the remote monitoring system, a measurement device that has a measurement function such as a sensor is provided near a monitoring target. The measurement device uploads an obtained measurement result to the application server as needed. The application server transmits obtained measurement data to communication equipment, such as a cell phone, a tablet, or a computer, used by a user. When the communication equipment used by the user receives the measurement data from the application server, the user confirms the measurement data as needed using, for example, an application. For example, when information such as humidity and temperature around a monitoring target of the monitoring system is measured by a sensor included in the measurement device, the information such as humidity and temperature around the monitoring target of the monitoring system is reported to the application server. When the communication equipment used by the user receives data such as humidity or temperature from the application server, the user confirms an obtained measurement result using the communication equipment. The system using IoT may be any system other than a remote monitoring system.
As a related technology, a system in which an observation station that includes a sensor transmits/receives meta data or sensor data to/from a server is known, the meta data or the sensor data being data about, for example, a connection of a sensor, an observation method, and a sensor data distribution. Further, a system has also been devised that includes an adaptor that is associated with a controlled device that is controlled by an integrated control device, in which screen information or a communication procedure used to control the controlled device is provided to the adaptor. In this system, the information provided to the adaptor is transferred to the integrated control device, so the setting in the integrated control device will remain unchanged even if the control procedure of the controlled device is changed. Furthermore, a method in which a gateway that receives a router request message from a sensor node specifies a service server using the received message; obtains, from the service server, information that is to be set in the sensor node; and transmits the information to the sensor node has also been proposed. Moreover, a method for controlling an event transfer on the basis of a result of comparing a hop attribute of an event received by an entity device with a hop attribute of a filter registered in a router that holds a filer that exhibits a hop attribute needed to obtain the event has also been proposed.
For example, documents such as Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2010-49560, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2000-22719, International Publication Pamphlet No. WO2008/102755, and Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2004-302960 are known.
An agreement state of services using IoT is managed by an application server, but the agreement state is not reported to a measurement device or to a relay device that relays a communication between the measurement device and the application server. Thus, even if the state of an agreement of a user has been changed, the measurement device and the relay device will perform processing of transmitting a measurement result similarly to the processing performed before the change of the agreement state. As a result, data that is no longer used by the user due to the agreement of the user having been changed may be transmitted to the application server, and needless communication processing may be performed. Further, even if any of the related technologies described above is used, it will be difficult to prevent a needless communication from being performed due to the change of an agreement of a user.